“Through drawing one grasps the nascent state of the idea and the true mastery of the artist, in a maximum synthesis of the meaning of art […] the primary mechanism of artistic thought, the matrix of creation”: with these words curator Fabio Benzi introduces the exhibition of 20th century drawings that the historic Galleria Russo is offering its collectors.
The exhibition offers a journey through 20th century Italian drawing that stands out for the extraordinary quality of the pieces chosen. While not claiming to give a philological coverage of the wealth of experience of the individual artists and the movements within which they moved, the exhibition offers a rich and evocative overview of Italian art of the past century that is both recognisable and excellent.
In a chronological path, the exhibition unfolds a succession of sheets that retrace the century through its major exponents: a splendid portrait by Boccioni from 1916, some of Balla’s tests between dynamism and colour studies, the classicism of a portrait by de Chirico, Sironi’s structured compositions, Cambellotti’s crepuscular images, Savinio’s surreal visions. And again Dottori, with his aeropictorial studies, Casorati, Carrà, Severini, Morandi, Rosai, three very elegant papers by Modigliani, to continue along the century through the experience of the
Roman School with Scipione and Mafai to the names of Pirandello, Afro, Licini, Capogrossi and Guttuso, and finally to Schifano, Cucchi, Dorazio and Paladino, who accompany the visitor into the midst of the most contemporary experiences.
